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Biography of Father DivineName: Father DivineBirth Date: c. 1877 Death Date: September 10, 1965 Place of Birth: Hutchinson Island, Georgia, United States Nationality: American Gender: Male Occupations: religious leader Father Divine Father Divine (c. 1877-1965) founded a cultish religious movement known as the Peace Mission. He served as its director from 1915 to 1965.Father Divine is one of the more perplexing figures in twentieth-century African American history. The founder of a cultish religious movement whose members regarded him as God, Father Divine was also an untiring champion of equal rights for all Americans regardless of color or creed, as well as a very practical businessman whose many retail and farming establishments flourished in the midst of the Great Depression. Regarded by many members of the traditional black church as an imposter or even a lunatic, Divine was praised by other observers as a powerful agent of social change, alone among the many cult leaders in Depression-era New York in providing tangible economic benefits for thousands of his disciples.The early biography of the man who later called himself Father Divine is little more …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…events:1890: Sherman Anti-Trust Act curtailed business monopolies1896: Supreme Court upheld segregation laws1912: Titanic sank in North Atlantic1916: Jeannette Rankin became the first U.S. congresswoman1926: Josef Stalin became dictator of the Soviet Union1933: End of Prohibition in the United States1943: The Pentagon was completed in Arlington, Virginia1945: Adolf Hitlercommitted suicide in Berlin1956: First transatlantic telephone cable was laid1963: John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas Further Reading booksThe African-American Almanac, edited by Kenneth Estell, Gale, 1994.Dictionary of American Negro Biography, edited by Rayford W. Logan and Michael R. Winston, Norton, 1982.Harris, Sara, Father Divine, Collier Books, 1971.Parker, Robert Allerton, The Incredible Messiah: The Deification of Father Divine, Little, Brown, 1937. Weisbrot, Robert, Father Divine and the Struggle for Racial Equality, University of Illinois Press, 1983.periodicalsNation, February 6, 1935.New Day (Peace Mission publication), various issues, 1936.New Yorker, June 13, 1936; June 20, 1936; June 27, 1936.New York Times, September 11, 1965, p. 1.Spoken Word (Peace Mission publication), various issues, 1934-37. |